Judge Joaquín Aguirre has given an interview to German public television to fuel suspicions about the Russian connections of the process that he himself is investigating in the framework of the Volhov case. In an unusual event, since the investigation of the case is still underway, the magistrate has responded on German television ARD1 and has denounced “the direct influence of Russia in the independence process of Catalonia.” According to his thesis, which has already been set out in some of his documents, Russia supported the independence process in Catalonia to destabilize all European democracies. “Supporting the independence process with the aim of Russia first destabilizing Spanish democracy and opening the back door to infiltration into all the liberal democracies of Western Europe,” the judge says in the interview.
The communication protocol of the General Council of the Judiciary (CGPJ) does not prohibit a judge from making statements about a matter they are investigating. However, it is more of a matter of decorum, since if the judge expresses opinions or accepts facts that are still being investigated as proven, he may be exposed to the accused requesting his recusal. The protocol indicates that the actions of the judges are reserved and only the decisions made during the procedure are made public.
Josep Lluís Alay, head of Puigdemont’s office and one of the defendants in this case, who is attributed with managing the contacts with Russia before the DUI, has presented a document in which he reproaches the judge for having granted an interview to deal with a case that he himself instructs and warns that he will take legal action. “Obviously, the granting of the interview to German television, and its content, will be the subject of a separate approach, but from now on the duty of the head of this court to abstain is announced given how unprecedented it is for a judge to grant interviews and talk, openly, about a case you are hearing about.” Furthermore, Alay denounces that the order issued yesterday by the judge is “inadmissible, illegal and laughable” and points out that “only a prospective instruction, lacking any legal and constitutional basis, can take seven years without anything reasonable having been achieved, much less something serious and that is not completely fanciful.”
Yesterday the judge issued an order in which he extended the investigation into the alleged Russian connections of the process for six more months and exposed actions by Carles Puigdemont that could fit into a crime of high treason, which would compromise his eligibility for the Amnesty law. . Before declaring independence, the judge maintains, there were “people close” to Puigdemont who met with emissaries from the Kremlin within the framework of Putin’s strategy of “destabilization of democracy and the European Union” that could have “consequences between the “which could lead to Spain’s departure from the EU due to the unilateral independence of Catalonia supported by the Russian Government, through economic and military support.”
